Tuesday, December 25, 2012

"Nature, no less than Life, is an imitation of Art."
"Where, if not from the Impressionists, do we get those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets,blurring the gas-lamps and changing the houses into monstrous shadows?
To whom, if not to them and their master, do we owe the lovely silver mists that brood over our river, and turn to faint forms of fading grace curved bridge and swaying barge?
The extraordinary change that has taken place in the climate of London during the last ten years is entirely due to a particular school of Art. "
"At present, people see fogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects.
There may have been fogs for centuries in London. I dare say there were.
But no one saw them, and so we do not know anything about them. "
Oscar Wilde

This provocative comparison comes into my mind when I think of the massacres, the recent one in Newtown.
Reality is very often the creation of the Media.
And when most media send daily images of shootings, murders, violent scenes, the ones (very many) that still have a childish mind cannot see the difference between fake and real and simply do in reality what they do in video games or see done in movies and TV.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

There are two realities: the one you can touch, and the one you believe.
And there are also two categories: The one who works and produces (99%) and the one who lives (beautifully) on the work of the 99%.

Did you ever see a plant invaded by the ivy?
The Ivy is beautifully green, glossy, looks wonderful.
The tree at the beginning looks suffering.
Looses one branch after the other and in the end is completely dry and dead.

The tree doesn’t know that without the parasite would live much better, at least would survive, the parasite KNOWS that without the tree wouldn´live.
That is why the IVY would never leave the tree, and the tree leaves the ivy sucking its blood.
May be there is also a subliminal procedure among plants....

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Skype has long provided assistance to governments
The Washington Post reported yesterday that:
Skype, the online phone service long favored by political dissidents, criminals and others eager to communicate beyond the reach of governments, has expanded its cooperation with law enforcement authorities to make online chats and other user information available to police.
The changes, which give the authorities access to addresses and credit card numbers, have drawn quiet applause in law enforcement circles but hostility from many activists and analysts.
To back up its claim, the post cites interviews with "industry and government officials familiar with the changes" who "poke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly." Ugh.
However, a quick Google search for "Skype law enforcement handbook" quickly turns up an official looking document on the whistleblower website cryptome.org, dated October 2007, which makes it clear that Skype has long been providing the assistance that the Post claims is new.
From Skype's 2007 law enforcement handbook:

In response to a subpoena or other court order, Skype will provide:

• Registration information provided at time of account registration • E-mail address • IP address at the time of registration • Financial transactions conducted with Skype in the past year, although details of the credit cards used are stored only by the billing provider used (for instance, Bibit, RBS or PayPal) • Destination telephone numbers for any calls placed to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) • All service and account information, including any billing address(es) provided, IP address (at each transaction), and complete transactional information
While Skype's law enforcement handbook suggests that the company does not have access to IP address session logs, high-profile criminal case from 2006 suggests that the company does.
Kobi Alexander, the founder of Comverse, was nabbed in Negombo, Sri Lanka yesterday by a private investigator.
He is wanted by the US government in connection with financial fraud charges.
He is accused of profiting from some very shady stock-option deals, to the detriment of Comverse shareholders.
Once the deals became public and he was indicted, he resigned as CEO and fled the US.
Alexander was traced to the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo after he placed a one-minute call using Skype.
That was enough to alert authorities to his presence and hunt him down.
This makes sense.
Skype clients connect to Skype's central servers (so that users can make calls to non Skype users, and learn which of their friends are online and offline), and so the servers naturally learn the IP address that the user is connecting from. This is not surprising.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

On one side I would like to hide in my hole, which is getting narrower even in this "rich" Germany.
I never really believed or liked this prosperity, I always lived beyond my means, so it is not difficult now, living in the same way, to survive.
Not looking at TV, not reading newspapers, illuding myself with the lies the propaganda tells everyday, going to you tube and looking for videos about anthropology, science, ethnology and may be cooking and gardening.
Forgetting this insanity, not looking or listening to what happens around me, "anyway" I think "I can do nothing to change".
I was shocked when I saw the Greek elections results, I was so sure that a population, cheated in every possible way, reduced to starvation, with no future, would have voted against Europe.
I was shockingly wrong.
In that moment I realized they were stronger than the mass, stronger than desperation, stronger than reality.
In that moment it was clear that democracy was slavery, that law was injustice and justice was a mere word. It meant, as Celente says "JUST US".
I would understand that in Italy.
There the majority still has "something" and hope.
Statistics say nobody believes in the light at the end of the tunnel, but it is like heaven, nobody believes in it, but everybody hopes that something will be THERE.
My mother, who was brought up like a catholic, used to say: I do not believe there is something, but I pray the same, you never know...
May be that is the trick.
Leaving hope.
I would so much like, but I cannot.
I cannot go on seeing and pretending I do not see.
I cannot let the big wave pass and try to be on its border, trying to feel the least and not looking to the ones in the middle.
But how?
I see it clearly now.
They want the mass starving, They want the mass enraged.
They want the mass marching and protesting.
Because they know that the ones like me, the ones that hate wars and are peaceful and want to change the world in a peaceful way, those, with thousands of others do things they would never do if let by themselves.
Put together 100 intelligent people and you will have a mass of idiots.
They will begin to break cars and windows etc.
They will become "terrorists" "revolutionaries" "Untrustable people".
And the people with the broken cars, windows, those people not ONLY will accept a dictator, they WILL ASK for SOMEBODY to bring back law and order.
You do not need to put in jail ALL, you need to put in jail the FEW leaders, and the others will just shut up.
I would like, but I cannot shut up...what can I do?

Sunday, December 16, 2012

"America’s willingness to stand up for the internet should be welcomed. But it has to be said that in doing so it is also defended its interests: no other country benefits as much from the status quo in the online world. Since much of the internet’s infrastructure is based in America and most of its traffic zips through it, America is in a unique position to eavesdrop, should it be so inclined. America’s internet firms also capture most of the profit pool of the online industry."

Friday, December 07, 2012

Imagine curling up on the couch with the morning paper and then using the same sheet of paper to read the latest novel by your favorite author. That's one possibility of electronic paper, a flexible display that looks very much like real paper but can be reused over and over. The display contains many tiny microcapsules filled with particles that carry electric charges bonded to a steel foil. Each microcapsule has white and black particles that are associated with either a positive or negative charge. Depending on which charge is applied; the black or white particles surface displaying different patterns. In the United States alone, more than 55 million newspapers are sold each weekday.

9.Bury The Bad Stuff

Carbon dioxide is the most prominent greenhouse gas contributing to global warming. According to the Energy Information Administration, by the year 2030 we will be emitting close to 8,000 million metric tons of CO2. Some experts say it's impossible to curb the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere and that we just have to find ways to dispose of the gas. One suggested method is to inject it into the ground before it gets a chance to reach the atmosphere. After the CO2 is separated from other emission gases, it can be buried in abandoned oil wells, saline reservoirs, and rocks. While this sounds great, scientists are not sure whether the injected gas will stay underground and what the long-term effects are, and the costs of separation and burying are still far too high to consider this technology as a practical short-term solution.

8.Let Plants and Microbes Clean Up After Us

Bioremediation uses microbes and plants to clean up contamination. Examples include the cleanup of nitrates in contaminated water with the help of microbes, and using plants to uptake arsenic from contaminated soil, in a process known as phytoremediation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has used it to clean up several sites. Often, native plant species can be used for site cleanup, which are advantageous because in most cases they don't require pesticides or watering. In other cases scientists are trying to genetically modify the plants to take up contaminants in their roots and transport it all the way to the leaves for easy harvesting.

7.Plant Your Roof

It's a wonder that this concept attributed to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of Seven Wonders of the World, didn't catch on sooner in the modern world. Legend has it that the roofs, balconies, and terraces of the royal palace of Babylon were turned into gardens by the king's order to cheer up one of his wives. Roof gardens help absorb heat, reduce the carbon dioxide impact by taking up Co2 and giving off oxygen, absorb storm water, and reduce summer air conditioning usage. Ultimately, the technique could lessen the "heat island" effect that occurs in urban centers. Butterflies and songbirds could also start frequenting urban garden roofs, and like the king's wife, could even cheer up the inhabitants of the building. Here, a green roof is tested at Penn State.

6.Harness Waves and Tides

The oceans cover more than 70 percent of the Earth's surface. Waves contain an abundance of energy that could be directed to turbines, which can then turn this mechanical power into electrical. The obstacle to using this energy source has been the difficulty in harnessing it. Sometimes the waves are too small to generate sufficient power. The trick is to be able to store the energy when enough mechanical power is generated. New York City's East River is now in the process of becoming the test bed for six tide-powered turbines, and Portugal's reliance on waves in a new project is expected to produce enough power for more than 1,500 homes. Here, a buoy system capable of capturing the oceans power in the form of offshore swells is illustrated by researchers at Oregon State University.

5.Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion

The biggest solar collector on Earth is our ocean mass. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the oceans absorb enough heat from the sun to equal the thermal energy contained in 250 billion barrels of oil each day. The U.S. consumes about 7.5 billion barrels a year. OTEC technologies convert the thermal energy contained in the oceans and turn it into electricity by using the temperature difference between the water's surface, which is heated, and the cold of the ocean's bottom. This difference in temperature can operate turbines that can drive generators. The major shortcoming of this technology is that it's still not efficient enough to be used as a major mechanism for generating power.

4.Sunny New Ideas

The sun's energy, which hits Earth in the form of photons, can be converted into electricity or heat. Solar collectors come in many different forms and are already used successfully by energy companies and individual homeowners. The two widely known types of solar collectors are solar cells and solar thermal collectors. But researchers are pushing the limits to more efficiently convert this energy by concentrating solar power by using mirrors and parabolic dishes. Part of the challenge for employing solar power involves motivation and incentives from governments. In January, the state of California approved a comprehensive program that provides incentives toward solar development. Arizona, on the other hand, has ample sunshine but has not made solar energy a priority. In fact in some planned communities it is downright discouraged by strict rules of aesthetics.

3.The 'H' Power

Hydrogen fuel cell usage has been touted as a pollution-free alternative to using fossil fuels. They make water by combining hydrogen and oxygen. In the process, they generate electricity. The problem with fuel cells is obtaining the hydrogen. Molecules such as water and alcohol have to be processed to extract hydrogen to feed into a fuel cell. Some of these processes require the using other energy sources, which then defeat the advantages of this "clean" fuel. Most recently, scientists have come up with ways to power laptops and small devices with fuel cells, and some car companies are promising that soon we'll be seeing cars that emit nothing but clean water. The promise of a "hydrogen economy," however, is not one that all experts agree will ever be realized.

2.Remove the Salt

According to the United Nations, water supply shortages will affect billions of people by the middle of this century. Desalination, basically removing the salt and minerals out of seawater, is one way to provide potable water in parts of the world where supplies are limited. The problem with this technology is that it is expensive and uses a lot of energy. Scientists are working toward better processes where inexpensive fuels can heat and evaporate the water before running it through membranes with microscopic pores to increase efficiency.

1.Make Oil from Just about Anything

Any carbon-based waste, from turkey guts to used tires, can, by adding sufficient heat and pressure, be turned into oil through a process called thermo-depolymerizations, This is very similar to how nature produces oil, but with this technology, the process is expedited by millions of years to achieve the same byproduct. Proponents of this technology claim that a ton of turkey waste can cough up about 600 pounds of petroleum.

Monday, December 03, 2012

Can you arrive to accept the most flagrant violations of reality?
When democracy evolves in Mediacracy, when power controls even perceptions,then war can be peace and lie is truth.
When the only reality you can see is a lie, then the lie is truth and when the only reality you can live is slavery freedom is slavery.
If only politicians can regulate the big corporations, then big corporations buy the politicians.
You have illusion of choice when you are not able to choose, because you are not educated to choose.
Nobody teaches you to discuss, to look for alternative reality.
You have ONE only reality.
You can chose among many trivialities which in the end are ALL the same.